Donald Trump has already postponed his promised December 15 announcement about how he is going to divest himself of his immense conflicts of interest because of his business ties around the world until after the new year and the Electoral College votes. He did tweet out the thin plan that his sons would be handed the reins of the family’s far-reaching real estate firm, a plan experts say falls very short of the mark, both legally and ethically.
But as Kurt Eichenwald details in a bombshell report published in Newsweek Tuesday, the corruption is already underway.
“Donald Trump hasn’t been sworn in yet, but he is already making decisions and issuing statements to world leaders that radically depart from American foreign policy, all to the benefit of his family’s corporate empire,” Eichenwald opens. “Because of this, the next president of the United States is already vulnerable to undue influence by other nations, including through bribery and even blackmail.”
The only way to get rid of these risks, according to Eichenwald and various other constitutional and legal experts, is for Trump to sell the Trump Organization outright and divvy up the proceeds amongst his clan (or keep it all for himself), since every foreign leader will otherwise know very well that it is in their interest to do business with the Trumps.
Trump’s Russia ties are only the beginning. Some of his most obvious conflicts of interests are in Asia and its subregions. Eichenwald describes how Trump has already cozied up to Rodrigo Duterte, the murderous president of the Philippines who is waging all-out war on his country’s drug trade by dispatching vigilante death squads to slaughter people. Trump reportedly signaled his approval of Duterte’s tactics when the two chatted in early December. Meanwhile, work on Trump Tower at Century City in Makati, Philippines, is nearly completed, giving Trump incentive to keep things friendly with Duterte. Plus, as Eichenwald reports, “The Trump family has an enormous…